Mea Culpa

It’s hard to admit this now, but I once admired Donald Trump and believed that he was quite a sharp fellow. Way back in the 80’s and 90’s, long before the birth certificate scandal, when “the Donald” was still married to his first wife and putting up impressive projects like the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, he seemed to have the golden touch.

I bought a copy of ‘The Art Of The Deal’ when it came out. I read it and took it seriously. We didn’t know at the time that the subject wasn’t paying his contractors or that he was racking up debt that would destroy most of his business ventures. His ghost writer left that part out of the book. We didn’t know about the secret deals that he had made with The National Enquirer, the payoffs and the iron-clad contracts to keep the sordid details of his personal life from being reported. They hid his secrets well.

I was fooled. I bought into the mystique of the genius who took a “small loan” from his father and turned it into a real estate empire. I thought of that as an amazing accomplishment by a shrewd and brilliant man. I wasn’t the only one who was fooled. Celebrities who have socialized with Trump over the years have admitted that they don’t recognize this current version of the man, the vindictive, race-baiting politician who offends America’s allies while befriending dictators. They remember him as being a good-natured guy who was fun to talk to.

It’s shocking to realize that you’ve been fooled not just easily, as anyone can perpetrate a myth about themselves, but so thoroughly and for so many years. I wrote a short poem about this a few months ago, the disappointment of looking up to someone, thinking that they are brilliant and inspiring, and finding out later that they weren’t at all who you thought they were, finding instead that they are corrupt and petty and dangerously out of control. It’s disquieting to discover that we can be fooled so effectively by someone’s carefully crafted hype.